The Sea of All Things
by Resmiranda
Summary: Even the smallest tug on the thinnest of threads can unravel the fabric of the stars. [Reylo]


**_The Sea of All Things_**

by

 _Resmiranda_

 _This ocean of the world is hard to cross: its waters are very deep. Kabîr says: "Listen to me, O Sadhu! few there are who have reached its end."_  
 **\- Kabîr,** _jis se rahani apâr jagat me_ _n_

 **BOOK ONE**

 _..falls the shadow.._

 **Chapter One**

 _"The pair of them,_  
 _half mad,_  
 _like you and me,_  
 _and night falling_  
 _in a strange, wild country."_  
 **-Alden Nowlan,** "Only When My Heart Freezes"

..o..

Kylo Ren opens his eyes and all around is darkness.

For a moment he thinks that perhaps he has gone blind, but then the world shifts, adjusts, and he realizes that he is sealed within a compartment, away from the light, away from everything. Isolated and in repose and meant to be resting, because there is also pain.

There is always pain, of course, but this time it is different. There is pain in his side, in his shoulder and chest, and a searing burn across his face. Aching, his movements ginger, Kylo reaches for his face and finds the brand of failure, carved into him for eternity. It has been patched and sealed, but no salve has been applied nor painkillers, and none will be given. Pain is his reward for his faults, as always.

Kylo closes his eyes again and listens. Far away, through the metal surrounding him, he feels the presence of others. Of Hux, brimming with crimson rage and frustrated ambition like roiling lava, of Phasma, her disappointment and steely determination a hard, rust colored spear in the Force. The devastation of loss, of defeat, crowds in on him, plucks at him with hungry fingers.

 _Retreat_ , Kylo thinks, and though he knows he should not he lets old memories, old habits learned in a youth he tries to forget, steal over him. Softly the pain recedes into the background.

An old Jedi trick, taught to him by his uncle.

The pain fades, but his hatred and anger at himself rises to take its place.

 _Weak,_ he thinks. He is weak for pulling back from pain. He should be embracing it.

 _Weak. Weak. Weak._

Then the rest of the quiet rushes in, a side effect of the diminishing of his own body. To escape pain, he must become small, but to become small invites other things in.

For a moment he struggles against the blooming of his awareness that comes with the Jedi meditations, but he cannot help it. His mind unfolds, spreads out, feeling through the Force the things that surround him. Stormtroopers, some wounded, others scared, still more burning with humiliation. The ship is seething with darkness, and Kylo Ren tries to reach for it, to use it to strengthen himself, to withstand the pain, to use it to fuel his own darkness, but no matter how hard he tries it slips through his mind like shadows.

Starkiller base. He feels the presence of its absence. It's been destroyed. And they are moving through space, in the darkness between the stars.

And Han Solo...

 _But no._

Even as he turns from the thought, the pain rises again. The Force is tormenting him and now there is the pain of others surrounding him, intruding on him, a hundred tendrils of agony that aren't even his to own. Broken bones, broken hearts, broken lives, broken minds.

All this Kylo Ren feels, and it has always been this way.

Bruised and battered, Kylo stops fighting the influx and grits his teeth on the hard pallet where he has been stowed away like an inconvenient piece of trash, the problem child no one knows what to do with. It's always been that way, too.

Slowly he catalogues his hurts, his grudges, his aches. Combing through his mind, his memories sift and shift. He has always had trouble with memories, since the feelings and pain of so many others perpetually intrude, confusing him.

Takonada. Starkiller base. His fath-no. Han Solo. His failure.

The girl.

 _The girl._

A flash of golden skin and brown hair and eyes calm and centered and so serene a slash of jealous rage slices through him, as she sliced through his face with the saber that should have been his.

And somewhere inside Kylo Ren, the thinnest of strings tightens, and something other than pain reaches out across the galaxy and plucks out a single pure note.

..o..

Rey opens her eyes, and all around is darkness.

She had been dreaming. Dreaming of flying snow and violet light, and it takes her a moment to remember where she is, that she is on Ach'to, that she is safe, that she is here with the last Jedi. Master Luke. Master Luke Skywalker.

Here, safe, with the legend. Which really makes it harder.

It is... not comfortable being here. The air is so moist and cool, the green of the island so blinding-or at least it is when the sun is filtering through the clouds, casting the water in gray, and there is water everywhere. When she arrived this afternoon, she thought it lovely. Now, however, in the night, there is a chill in the air that robs her bones of warmth.

For a moment, Rey thinks of Jakku, and her stomach twists, a dark and terrible snake in her belly.

Old thoughts surface, habits now. _I should be back there. What if they've come? What if they have come back for me and I am not there?_

But no, that is stupid. It's been long enough. She knows about waiting and wanting and now it is time to grab the galaxy with both hands and pull herself into it. There was nothing left for her on Jakku. Definitely nothing. She must remind herself of that.

On the other hand, there's not much for her here, either.

Master Luke. Ah, the way he had looked at her when she ascended the steps of his temple. The way his eyes spoke as clearly as if he had used his tongue.

 _This fight cannot be mine,_ he had said without a word.

Not that she had quite expected him to jump aboard the Falcon and head off to battle in the resistance again, but in that moment, as she held out the lightsaber of his father, mutely begging for his help, she could feel-and she was sure it was the Force, though her acquaintance with it is still tenuous and passing, like the faintest of gossamer brushing against her throat-she could feel him rooted like a tree, his very essence buried deep in the island beneath them, his life entwined with the earth, nourished but inseparable.

And then he had turned away from her without a word.

Master Luke didn't talk. He led her to his fire and stoked it. He fed her hard bread and roots and a tea so bitter it made her throat close. Several times Rey had opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out, and she had felt a very gentle pressure upon her, as though Master Luke could not bear the sound of another human voice and was, in the tenderest way possible, telling her to shut the hell up.

Rey got it. She didn't like it when people talked too much either.

Finally, after they had eaten, Rey screwed up the courage to speak through her awe.

"Master Luke," she had said. "If you will not come back... then I need a teacher."

And then he had looked at her, and his eyes had been so sad.

"You already have one," he said cryptically, then rose and walked away, down to where Chewie sat in the Millennium Falcon, leaving Rey to sit and wait and fight the rising anger in herself that had no direction and no outlet and for a moment she considered unleashing the lightsaber that Master Luke had refused to touch and cutting down a tree or two, but there weren't many trees and it would have been needlessly destructive.

After a long while, she watched as the Falcon rose into the air and flew away. After an even longer while, Master Luke returned.

"There is a hut that you might find comfortable," he said, his voice raw and ragged. "You may stay there for the night. In the morning, you will leave. I have a transporter you can use. Come."

This was not how things were supposed to go, and Rey felt her temper flaring. Disgruntled and frustrated, she clambered to her feet, threw her staff over her shoulder and followed him. She definitely didn't think about how she could perhaps brain him on the back of the head and drag him back to the Resistance Base herself.

Okay, she thought about it a _little_ bit, but the thought subsided when Master Luke paused and glanced back at her with his old, old eyes.

Oh yes. She wouldn't just have to get up early to get the jump on him; she'd have to stay up all night, and even _then_ she'd fail. She only thought about it a little more as they climbed to her nightly shelter.

The hut was a squat stone structure, clearly thousands of years old. That it still stood was amazing, and Rey tried not to think about sleeping in it when it finally decided to give up the ghost and collapse in on itself.

A stone slab served as a bed against one wall. Nothing else adorned the hut, and when Rey turned to ask Master Luke if there were any blankets she found him already gone.

Now, Rey lies awake on the slab. She has her own blanket, and her pack serves as a pillow well enough, but she's still restless. It's not that she is unused to discomfort. It's that she is unused to the darkness.

It is so complete that she is almost afraid she has lost her vision, that the great blow delivered to her as she smashed into a tree on the Starkiller base had knocked something loose, but after a moment she realizes that she is merely facing the wall and there is no moon tonight. Perhaps Ach'to doesn't even have a moon.

Now she is wide awake. Turning, Rey stares at the stone ceiling and wonders what she is doing here.

 _Bring Luke back,_ General Organa had told her. _Bring him back. We_ need _him._

But that was ridiculous. How can she bring him back? She's no one, and though she has had practice at waiting and is certain she could at least attempt to wait out Luke kriffing Skywalker, she is still just a girl from a junk planet who can use the Force, for whatever good that does her. There is no reason for the last Jedi to listen to her.

Her stomach sinks at the thought, and, restless, Rey rises and pads outside to stand beneath the stars.

 _I am no longer no one,_ she thinks, which is a strange thought to have, since she has been no one for so long, _but I am not yet_ someone _._

And then, as the starlight falls upon her face, something long and thin slips its way through her heart and _pulls_.

..o..

The transport jerks out of hyperspace at the same moment Kylo Ren lurches to his feet, all the pain of the past days making themselves felt anew, but they don't quite seem to matter, because Kylo Ren has felt something that is not supposed to be here.

No. No, not something. Some _one._

Drawing upon all his strength, Kylo staggers to the door, composes himself, and then slides it open. He is not surprised to find the ship beyond his darkened cell to be small and somewhat of a wreck. So much must have been left behind on the base. The Resistance lost much of their fighting power, but so has the First Order, and it is not surprising that he can sense much time has passed since their departure from the dying planet. This craft was not meant for speed.

For the briefest moment, Kylo Ren reaches out and gathers the Force around him, willing it to hold him up. It is not hard; anguished pride and raw, burning humiliation are strong, and the darkness responds to them. With straight shoulders and barely a limp, Kylo Ren makes his way to the bridge of the ship.

Hux is there, with a skeleton crew. His back is turned to the bridge entrance, but Kylo senses his awareness of him. His steps are heavy. Anyone could hear him coming now.

On the viewing screen, Moraband looms.

 _Moraband._ Ancient seat of the Sith. Fitting that Supreme Leader would choose it as their base. It hangs against the darkness like a spot of blood.

Ren strolls, as smoothly as he can with a gaping blaster wound in his side, to stand beside Hux. It gives him pleasure to do so because he knows Hux hates him, and that hate is like honey. He also does not need to ask why they are here. Moraband is the place of training. The place of regrouping. Like a ragged flock of crows, the remains of the First Order falter through the stars toward their primordial home.

Yes. Snoke is down there. And Kylo will have to face him. Already he is steeling his mind, knowing the extra torment that will be his due when they arrive, but it was not Snoke that he felt, that had inspired him to surge to his feet despite his injuries.

 _No,_ he thinks. _Who is it?_

Passing familiar, a flavor he cannot quite place. Sensations crowd him, but there is something in his chest and it is strange and foreign and he _does not like it._

"We will be landing soon," Hux says, needlessly.

Kylo turns and stalks out of the cabin without a word, and the delicate thread, what is it, _what is it,_ tugs and tugs so gently he almost cannot feel it through the crush of emotions and passions that course through the Force around him, buffeting him from all sides.

 _Almost._

His mouth tastes violet and sweet.

..o..

Something is wrong, and Rey knows it. With haste she throws her blanket into her rucksack, clips the lightsaber to her belt, and throws her staff over her back. Ducking out of the stone hut, the cold wind of the ocean washes over her, stealing her breath.

She has to be calm. She _has_ to be calm. That was what she learned on Starkiller Base. Be calm. Reach for the Force. Surely Master Luke is not hiding himself within the folds of the world, just to be rid of her for the night? She can find him with the Force, if she can remember how to do it.

Rey closes her eyes and tries to find the cool, calm center of herself, the pure pearl of that which is Rey. It's there, down between the layers of thought and doubt, under the shadow of forgotten ideas, nestled in the depressions left by emotions that she has long since moved and locked away in some secret part of herself. It's there, it's there, she can feel it...

And there it is.

And _there_ is something else.

A flash of crimson splashes across her brain and Rey recoils, instinct overriding her calming breaths.

Something was there, wrapped around _her._ Fear flares and she struggles to remember what it was, and into her head pops the strangest of images: a long, thin red thread growing from the smooth, glowing surface of herself, stretching out into the stars, out into the galaxy and into some shadowed place as dark as the locked cabinets in her heart.

Her breath comes fast now. She has to find Master Luke. Swallowing hard, Rey begins to feel her way through the ruins of the temple, through the echoes and the ghosts and the strangest feeling that someone is watching her.

Then she knows: something is following her.

Rey glances back. She has never been afraid of the dark, but there are things that hide there, and until she knows what it is she cannot be at ease. There is nothing behind her, however, except that there _is_ something. Just because she cannot see it does not mean it isn't there.

A quick staccato beat picks up in her chest, and it takes all her courage to not run. As casually as possible, she unshoulders her staff and uses it as a crutch as she takes the steps down the steep side of the island two at a time.

Something breathes down the back of her neck, or it's the breeze, and her hair stirs and rises and something swells up inside her, a fear, a terror, the ever-present horror of that which treads close behind, and she is blindly running down the steep hill, and without her consent her voice bursts from her chest and she cries out:

"Master Luke!"

..o..

"Supreme Leader."

Kylo Ren bows before Snoke, smaller than his projection, but still tall and thin and utterly humorless. He feels naked without his mask, but there is nothing for it. It was lost on the planet. The burn across his face still sears and pulls, but it will be nothing next to what Snoke is sure to do to him now.

"Kylo Ren," Snoke says, and his voice is like two gravestones knocking together.

Kylo swallows and stares at the gritty floor of the ancient Sith temple. Red dust, impossible to sweep away, stirs beneath his breath. His black hair hangs at the edge of his vision, and so all his world is ebony and rust.

Snoke shifts in his throne. Kylo hears the rasp of fabric and dry skin against the stones. "Tell me, Kylo Ren," he says, "how was it you were bested by a traitor and a scavenger from a backwater planet?"

There are reasons. Many reasons. He was injured. He had just...just done something that he could still not wrap his mind around. He was filled with rage. He was reckless. He underestimated the girl.

The girl.

Again that strange tug, and Kylo tries to push it from his mind and focus on the answer that will be acceptable to Snoke.

"I was not strong enough," he says finally. Better to admit weakness than try to hide it. Snoke, it seems, can see right through him, down to the twisted black heart of Kylo Ren, down to the dead husk of someone who had once been called Ben Solo.

"No," Snoke agrees. "You were not."

The pain comes then. Kylo doesn't have to look up to see his master reaching out, his hand clenched in a fist. Somewhere inside his already battered body, Kylo feels something slide together, squeezed tight, until he is sure that whatever it is will burst.

Snoke holds him until he gasps for breath. Coughs. Spits blood. Then he releases him.

"You are weak," Snoke says, and Kylo Ren closes his eyes, because hearing those words from the Supreme Leader is a hundred times worse than the physical punishment his master inflicts. "Weakness is within you. Your compassion for this...scavenger...allowed her to escape. Allowed her to best you. You did not fight to kill, did you?"

Unable to trust his voice, Kylo shakes his head.

"And why not?"

Kylo grits his teeth and tastes copper. "She was strong. Strong in the Force. I thought if I could turn her, seduce her to the dark side, teach her what power she could weild...I thought she would be useful."

That is all Kylo Ren allows himself to say, because there is the briefest flash in his mind of an exposed throat and intense brown eyes and the feel of her inside him-

"I see," Snoke says, and Kylo struggles not to react.

Silence stretches between master and apprentice until, abruptly, Kylo Ren is dragged to his feet and across the floor.

It has been a long time since his master used the Force on him in this way, so long that he is not prepared, and he curses himself for his inattentiveness. He should be able to resist it, but he cannot, not that it has begun.

The ruined face of Snoke looms in his vision and the stench of decay and rot surrounds him. Very carefully, Kylo breathes as little as possible.

This close to Supreme Leader Snoke, Kylo Ren is overwhelmed. So much hate, so much malice pours from his master. It licks at him, hooks its claws into him, drags its fingers through his soul. There is no defense in Snoke's presence, no way to block the pure darkness rolling off of him in waves. Long ago he had once tried to put up a barrier, to keep some distance between them, but he had been brutally punished. _A Jedi trick_ , Supreme Leader had told him. _The Force is everywhere. Use it. The darkness in me, the darkness in you, the darkness in all things is your power._ Use _it!_

And Kylo Ren tries, he tries, but the withered face and corpse-stink wash over him, and the darkness of Snoke is so profound he can't feel his brain, and somewhere inside his head Supreme Leader is probing, plucking out his secrets, his weaknesses, his every traitorous slip toward the Light...

Without warning Snoke drops him, and Kylo manages, barely, to catch himself on his feet, though it jolts the blaster wound in his side and it takes all his strength not to stagger and fall to his knees.

"She is there," Snoke says, and Kylo, still reeling from the closeness of his master, can hardly comprehend his words.

"There?" he says, and his voice is muzzy. There are memories plucking at him, memories that he's almost certain are not his own.

"In your mind," Snoke says. "You have forged a Force bond with the little desert rat."

Kylo Ren blinks and shakes his head. "That...that cannot be possible."

The ruined face above him twists in what might have been an ironic smile. "You doubt me? Look into yourself. Your connection to her is barely a few atoms wide, but it is there. So fragile-seeming, and yet..."

Force bond. Kylo had heard of the Force bond, but he hadn't believed it was a thing that could happen. He had never seen it, and all those who had experienced it had died out long ago and become legends. Stories. Fairy tales.

Myths of connections made between people so strong they altered history, changed fate, and a tickle of fear rises in Kylo Ren. His fate, the one he has worked so hard for...could it be changed by this bond?

"Supreme Leader...can it be broken?" he asks.

There is no warning, hardly any space between his question and his sudden flattening to the ground as the Supreme Leader suddenly rises from his throne. Red dust tickles his nose, and the burn across his face screams as it grinds into the stone.

"Kylo Ren," Snoke says, and his voice booms in the long hallway, "you will use this bond. You will find this girl."

 _Find her. Yes._ He wants to. But why...?

"Where, my foolish apprentice, do you think she would go once the map fell into the hands of the Resistance?"

Realization dawns. "Skywalker..." Kylo whispers against the ground, and then the great crushing pressure is released and Supreme Leader himself picks him up from the ground and puts him on his feet.

"You will be able to find her through your bond," Snoke says. "Where the girl is, there is Skywalker. Find them. Kill Skywalker, and bring the girl to me."

The ghosts inside Kylo Ren's head stroke cold fingers over his heart, but he lifts his bloodied chin.

"Yes, Master," he says, and deep inside the thread of the bond begins to tingle.

..o..

Rey has never known such a feeling. There's something in her, something sick and strange and wild, and as she runs beneath the moonless sky, calling for Master Luke, she feels it grow and grow. But wherever Luke has gone, he cannot hear her, and dawn finds her exhausted and half-dead at the campfire where Master Luke had fed her last night.

Her thoughts are a tangle, a twisted nest of desert weeds, dry and brittle and probably hiding some venomous creature.

Despite the heaviness of her limbs, she paces restlessly, and though she tries again to feel the Force, to let the light in, to let it guide her, it is useless. She is untrained, and she hates that she does need a teacher and where is Luke Skywalker?

"I am here," a gentle, rough voice says from behind her, and Rey, her nerves ringing like alarm bells, whirls around to see his tired face and ancient eyes staring at her from across the suddenly lit camp fire.

"Master Luke," Rey breathes. "Master Luke, I need your help. I need you to teach me, please. If you won't come back..."

Master Luke holds up a hand, and Rey feels suddenly quieter. She realizes that he has used the Force to calm her down, but the realization only makes her trepidation and desperation spike higher.

Master Luke's lips thin. "You see?" he says, as though something has been explained.

"See what?" Rey asks, exasperated and exhausted.

Master Luke shrugs. "I do not believe you are meant to be my Padawan."

Something ugly and terrible, grey and slimy, slides down into Rey's stomach. If she is not to be his Padawan, well...

 _I'll go to the Resistance. No, back to Jakku. Have I missed my chance?_ Of course not. There was no chance. But useless hope was a hard habit to break.

Rey sniffs and lifts her chin. "Why not?" she says. "Am I...am I lacking in some way?"

The old Jedi's eyes widen, and for a moment the ghost of a smile plays on his lips. "Child," he says, "there is nothing lacking in you. You have great potential. But you are not my Padawan. There is another teacher for you."

An echo trembles in Rey's bones and she pushes the feeling away. "What do you mean?"

The Jedi master's dark, mechanical hand waves lazily at her. "You already have bonded with your teacher. You have found someone who can teach you."

Rey takes a step back. "No," she says. "No I haven't."

Master Luke tips his head. "Can you not sense it? There is a faint thread in you. I can feel it through the Force. It is...not strong. But it is there. And once forged it cannot be broken. I do not know who it could have been who woke you to the force, but you are now bonded. I cannot be your teacher. When a bond happens, it is often between Master and Padawan."

"Is...is that what this feeling is?" she asks. "This...restlessness?"

"I do not know," Luke says. "I have never felt it."

The palms of her hands itch and Rey casts her mind about desperately for an answer, for someone who could be her teacher, who could have showed her the ways of the Force.

Someone who is _not_ the person she fears.

"Maz Kanata," she says suddenly. Her first experience with the Force had been there, but no, that had been triggered by the lightsaber, and the energy inside her is not the calming gentleness of the ancient alien woman.

"L...Leia Organa," she tries again, and Master Luke's face twitches, but again Rey knows it is not possible. There is nothing of the General in this feeling. Her stomach coils and suddenly Rey's bones feel hollow, as though she has been drained of marrow, of substance.

Her mouth tastes of blood and snow.

Recoiling, Rey backs away. The soft green moss beneath her feet is suddenly slippery and treacherous under her soft boots, and she stumbles, shaking her head.

"No," she says. "No, no. Definitely not. _No!"_

The old Jedi's face creases. "What is it that you fear?" he asks gently, but he doesn't know, doesn't _know_ , and then Rey is slipping on the wetness, down to one knee in the mud and from the corner of her tunneling vision she sees Master Luke make a movement toward her, as though to help her up.

Then they sky thuds like a gong and Rey remembers it _too well_.

Inside Rey, the faint, spider-silk bond bursts into flames. She cries out as she lifts her eyes to the clouds to see the ponderous black ship of Kylo Ren swoop down through the air, folding its wings like some great dragon coming to rest upon its horde of treasure, and Rey is on her feet and running.

But it does no good.

In her chest, the bond begins to _sing,_ and behind her follows Kylo Ren.

..o..

 **A/N:** Next chapter there will be action and lightsabers! PEW PEW SPACE LASERS, I mean stabbings! Also, uh, I've been going through some shit. I haven't been able to write in like a year and a half. This is the first completed thing I've managed to produce in that time. Also this is, uh, probably going to be some kind of House of the Moon shit, so prepare thyselves, I guess. If I still got it in me.

...LOOK JUST ENJOY THE REYLO AND LOOK FORWARD TO THE SLOW BURN SMUT


End file.
